Tuesday, August 12, 2008

I finally got my act together and found a place to store my wine. It had been sleeping in a friend's basement cellar, but he sold his house. Based on my own research and on a reader's recommendation, I chose Acker Merrall & Condit. We drove out there the other day with a load of wine and everything was very smooth, excellent service so far, except for a few minor and easily corrected mistakes with inventory. Advice: keep careful inventory yourself before putting wine into storage.

The warehouse is the size of an airplane hangar. In the receiving area there are stacks of wine boxes and many tables with individual bottles standing like flags waving in the breeze. I saw about 12 wooden crates of Screaming Eagle, and what looked like half a shipping container's worth of Krug boxes.

A double magnum of 1990 DRC Romanée St.Vivant caught my eye. "That's going up for auction," said our guide. A bottle of 1947 Musigny, a 1962 Latour, all sorts of of big-name wines just lounging around on these tables waiting for service.

"What's new in business?" I asked."The Chinese are huge buyers right now," he said. "They won't touch anything except for first growth Bordeaux, but they're buying loads of it. LOADS. They don't go for anything else, not even the great Burgundies."

Interesting, right? What do you make of that? If this is true everywhere, and not just in the world of Acker Merrall, does this mean that newly wealthy Chinese folks are buying wines as trophies? Or, are they starting to learn about wine and opting to begin with what's supposed to be the very best? Is this about saving face, and buying whatever their wealthy friends and colleagues also buy? Is it simply a lack of creativity? It made me sad to think about this.

But only for a moment. Then I realized...

Thank goodness it's first growth Bordeaux that they're after. If it were Loire wine, grower Champagne, or Beaujolais, it would really wreck my life. And I couldn't just sit around and watch it happen.

I would have to secretly enlist a few folks like McDuff, Lyle, and Alice, spend time in intense training on a unknown island, and then embark on stealth mission to China, our own sort of Enter the Dragon thing. We would visit their compounds under the cover of night and do whatever is necessary. This, of course, would jeopardize US/Chinese relations and cause all sorts of problems, maybe even war. So we should all be grateful that they're buying first growth Bordeaux. Yes, wealthy Chinese business people - be warned. Hands off Clos Rougeard, Geoffroy, and Foillard. There will be very serious consequences.